we see mysterious icy figures called “white walkers”, or “Others”.

At first, we know nothing about them. Now, five books and five seasons later, we… still

know almost nothing. But we “do know some things”, so let's look at what we've got and try to work out what the Others are, what they want, and what'll happen.

The Others appear as “white shadows in the darkness”, “Tall and gaunt”

with “Bright … blue” eyes. They “come when it's cold”, in the night, or else

they bring the cold and darkness when they come. Old Nan calls them “dead things”,

Sam calls them “monsters”, and Stannis calls them “Demons made of snow and ice and cold”,

but when one's killed we see they're “creatures” made of “blood”

and “flesh” and “bone”. George Martin has said that they're “not dead”

but“a different sort of life” – “strange, beautiful … inhuman, elegant, dangerous”.

In the show, the walkers look more or less like really old men with wrinkled skin, white

beards, black nails, and bad teeth. Either way, the Others clearly aren't “dead things”

or “demons” but living creatures. They speak, in a language of their own. They laugh,

they “screech” in pain , in the show they show shock and anger. They make things out of ice.

So the Others are intelligent, with emotion and maybe culture.

They might not be the monsters that they seem. That said, they do a lot of killing.

The Others wear “rippl[ing] … shift[ing]” armour that can make them near-“invisible”,

and wield “strange pale sword[s]” so sharp they can “slice … through ringmail

as if it were silk”. They fight effortlessly, mercilessly, “lightning quick” and

with the strength, in the show, to throw men like ragdolls. “their … swords are so

cold they shatter steel”, and their armour protects them from most blades – they seem

unstoppable. But they can be killed with obsidian, also called dragonglass. Sam stabs an Other

with an obsidian dagger, and the walker “melt[s] away“, its fingers smoking where they touch

obsidian. It's also hinted that Valyrian steel swords can kill walkers , and we see

this in the show – Jon Snow's Valyrian steel sword disintegrates an Other into icy

CGI. Others also apparently “don't like fire” – which probably means they'd

really hate dragons. The Others resurrect the dead as “wights”,

basically zombies controlled by the Others. Wights are “slow clumsy things”, “with

blue eyes and cold black hands”, though in the show they're sometimes skeletal and

fast . Wights don't speak , and seem to have no humanity left – though they seem

to keep some memories. The Others make wights out of “men … women … children” – and

animals – walkers “ride dead horses”, send a bear into battle , and animate a

raven. The Others use wights to fight for them, and they're very dangerous. Wights

seem stronger than living men, able to “[lift a man] in the air by the throat and near [rip]

the head off him”. In the show they tear through timber with their bare hands, they

fall off a cliff and keep on running. They don't seem to feel pain. Even losing their

head won't stop them , and if a hand is cut off, the hand will keep moving. Unlike

the Others, wights aren't hurt by obsidian. The only way to stop them is to chop them

into bits , or to burn them. Wights are really flammable, “burst[ing] into flame” from

even a little touch of fire. So one wight isn't all that bad, but at the Fist of the

First Men, and at Hardhome in the show, they come in a huge “swarm”, an unstoppable

“tide of [the] living dead”, all controlled by the icy white walkers.

So what do the Others want? What are they doing? Well, they've been killing a lot

of humans. In Book 1 they kill some wildlings, and some men of the Night's Watch , and

they send wights after the Lord Commander and acting First Ranger at Castle Black. In

Book 3 they use wights to kill hundreds of Night's Watchmen at the Fist of the First

Men , then Sam kills a walker, and later wights are sent after Sam and Gilly. In Book 5 wights

attack Bran and company , and attack Hardhome. We also learn the Others have been attacking

wildlings for years , forcing them to flee south and “hide behind [the] Wall”. So

the Others are killing humans of many different groups on a large scale, and are building

an army of the dead . But that's not all they're doing.

The wildling Craster refers to the Others as “gods”, and has a sort of an agreement with them.

They don't attack him and his wives , and in return, Craster gives them his male children,

leaving the newborns in the snow to be collected by the Others. In the show, there's a scene

where an Other takes one of Craster's sons to a kind of an altar in what looks like the

far-north Land of Always Winter. There, the baby is changed into what looks like an Other.

One of Craster's wives refers to the Others as “Craster's sons”. So it looks like

the Others can transform humans into Others, and that some people give their children to

the Others as a religious offering. It's probably not just Craster doing this. There

are all sorts of “strange” wildling cultures further to the north, and some of them are

rumoured to worship “gods of snow and ice”. Sacrifice to the Others may be a widespread

thing. The word Others is used as a curse, like a swear word, and the phrase is almost

always “The Others take you”. It's not 'the Others kill you”, or 'the Others

steal your stuff' – it is sometimes 'the Others bugger you' – but it's almost

always “the Others take you”, suggesting that the Others have a history of taking humans.

We also hear stories of “wildlings who would lay with the Others to birth half-human children”,

which sounds like a different thing, but either way, the Others clearly don't just

want to kill humans, but also want to use them make more Others. Maybe that's the

only way Others can reproduce, maybe this is part of some kind of natural cycle. For

now, we don't know. What we do know is that the Others are killing people, they're building

an army of the dead, and winter is coming. Melisandre says they're “marshalling”

their “evil” “power” and will wage “a war for life itself”, that they'll

bring a “night that never ends”, unless “true men” can fight them in a “great

battle” called “the war for the dawn”. Stannis calls the Others “The only enemy

that matters”. Jon calls them the “real foe” and says “they will come for us”.

Everyone's expecting war between humanity and the Others.

Which could make sense, because a “war for the dawn” has apparently happened before.

We're told legends of “the Long Night” – a dark winter, thousands of years ago,

that lasted a generation. It's said that “In that darkness, the Others came”, to

“extinguish all light and warmth”. “They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms,

felled heroes and armies by the score, riding” “monstrous ice spiders and the horses of

the dead”, “leading hosts of the slain”. When “the realms of men” were almost

at “an end”, Westeros was saved by the “last hero”, who, with the “help”

of the children of the forest – who might have given him obsidian – established the

Night's Watch, and defeated the Others in battle. After this victory, the Wall was

built to make sure the Others could never came back. So that's the story in Westeros.

Across the Narrow Sea, the Rhoynar have legends of a darkness, but there's no mention of

the Others or a battle. In central Essos, the Dothraki and the cultures of Slaver's

Bay seem to have no tales of the Long Night. But in the far east, there are legends very

similar to the one of the “last hero” and the “battle for the dawn”.

The YiTish say that during the Long Night they were attacked by the “Lion of Night” and his “demons”,

who were defeated when a hero called Azor Ahai forged a burning sword and led humanity

into battle. Now, huge mysterious citadels called the Five Forts stand to keep the demons

out, dividing the “realms of men” from the Grey Waste beyond . Which sounds a lot

like the Wall, right? And the “demons” of the “Lion of Night” sound a lot like

the Others. Isn't it super weird that such similar things happened on apparently opposite

sides of the world? George Martin has said that his world is round, so if you went far

enough east you must eventually find Westeros. Maybe these two places, the Grey Waste and

the Land of Always Winter, are connected. Maybe the Others of Westeros and the “demons”

of Yi Ti are one and the same, based in some place between the Wall and the Five Forts.

That would make this area a centre of cold in this world, leaving Valyria – where the

Targaryens and apparently dragons come from – a centre of heat. This gives a sense of

order to the fire and ice in this world, and might explain why the Long Night affected

Westeros and Yi Ti so badly without affecting central Essos apparently at all. This could

also be related to the irregular seasons, which George Martin has suggested will eventually

be resolved somehow. Anyway, the main legends agree that the Long Night ended with a battle

led by a hero now prophesied be reborn and save the world once more.

Which, y'know, could happen. Jon Snow could be reborn with a flaming sword as Azor Ahai,

he could unite the Night's Watch, the wildlings, and the north, and lead them to war, killing

Others with obsidian from the children of the forest – or from Stannis' mines

– and Daenerys could fly in with her dragons, to burn away the dead, and Tyrion could ride

one of the dragons, and Bran could warg one of the other ones, and Rickon could ride in

on a unicorn, and all the good guys could come together and kill all the bad guys, and

Daenerys and Jon could make out, and rule together as Queen and King, as fire and ice,

for ever and ever, the end. Except things probably won't be that simple.

Does it really make sense for this story to end with a war? We've seen so much war already,

and most it achieves nothing but suffering. Look at Robb Stark's campaign, Daenerys'

conquests in Slaver's Bay, Stannis' invasion of Blackwater Bay – they're all seemingly

just wars waged by seemingly good people, but they all fail their original goals and

cause a huge amount of suffering, not just for the nobility, but for the common people.

Look at Arya's chapters at Harrenhal, Jaime's chapters in the riverlands, at Septon Meribald's

speech – we're shown over and over that war is terrible and wrong and pointless.

George Martin himself was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and many of his other

books also have a strong anti-war theme . So how can a story filled with terrible, unjust,

pointless wars end with a great war that saves the world?

A “war for the dawn” would also be too obvious. George Martin has said that “part

of the thing [he] always strive[s] for in [his] books, is not to be predictable”. And

what could be more predictable than the good guys defeating the evil ice monsters in a

big epic battle? Martin has specifically criticised the Lord-of-the-Rings-style war between good

and evil. He says “We don't need any more Dark Lords, we don't need any more” “good

guys battling bad guys”, “the wars in my books are much more morally complex”.

Showrunner David Benioff has said “it's not going to be your classic good-versus-evil

conflict”. So the writer of the series and the creators of the show, as well as the

series itself make it clear that this story won't end with a righteous war between good

guys and bad guys. Which makes you wonder –

maybe that's not what happened last time either. Legends of the Long Night and the “battle for the

dawn” are ancient , and weren't even written down until thousands of years after they supposedly

happened. We're warned over and over not to trust these tales. So while the Long Night

did seem to have happened, and the Others clearly are real, the “war for the dawn”

might not have happened the way we're told. After all, it's pretty hard to believe that

humanity could've defeated the Others – we've seen how dangerous they are. Would a hero

with a flaming sword have been enough to win the war? A popular idea in the fan community

is that the Long Night ended with some kind of peaceful agreement between humanity and

the Others. Hints of this can be found at the Nightfort.

The Nightfort is the oldest and the largest of the castles on the Wall, the “chief seat

of the [Night's] Watch” for “thousands of years”. Now, it's abandoned, and notorious

as a “haunted” and “dreadful place”. It's the subject of horror stories and

strange legends, some of which hint at a connection between the Night's Watch and

the Others. This brings us to the story of the Night's King. To clear something up

real quick, this white walker in the show is referred to as the “Night King” by

HBO, but it's probably not the same figure as the legendary Night's King, at least

not in the books, so keep that in mind. The story of the Night's King goes that thousands

of years ago, the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch loved a woman “with

skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars” – which sounds like an Other or

a wight. He “gave his seed to her [and] his soul as well”, he “proclaimed her

a queen and himself her king”, he “bound his Sworn Brothers to his will” “with

strange sorceries”, and “ruled” “For thirteen years” until the Starks and the

wildlings “joined” together to cast him down. It was then found that the Night's

King had been making “sacrifice[s] to the Others”, which might mean giving them babies,

like Craster. The Night's King was doing this at the Nightfort, and the Nightfort just

happens to have a super creepy underground “hidden” magic door called the Black Gate

that lets Night's Watchmen through the Wall. It's likely that the Night's King was

using this sneaky door to make his secret sacrifices. And the thing is – the Black

Gate is as “old as the Wall itself”. Why does “The greatest and oldest” of the

Night's Watch's castles, its “chief seat” for “thousands of years”, have

an in-built sneaky hidden door to beyond the Wall? Maybe it had always been used for secret

sacrifice to the Others. There are several other legends connecting this castle to the

Others – one about a “hero” with suspiciously blue eyes , another about a “thing that